


the world is breaking someone else's heart

by lovetincture



Series: Something Wicked [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Demon Hannibal Lecter, Disturbing Themes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:41:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23469106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture
Summary: Sam and Dean Winchester meet a demon. Then they meet Will Graham. They know how this story goes: slay the demon, save the boy—except that’s not how the story goes. That’s not how it goes at all.(Probablydoesn't need to be read as part of a series.)
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: Something Wicked [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534619
Comments: 44
Kudos: 150





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m doing a Supernatural + Hannibal crossover! More specifically, I’m doing a crossover with the characters from my AU series, [Something Wicked](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534619). If you want to do the bare minimum of background reading to figure out what’s going on, I suggest reading [Party Favors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287546) and chapters 1 & 4 of [Ruby Red and Copper Bitter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21307676).
> 
> If you’re just here for Supernatural and have no desire whatsoever to read Hannibal fic, here’s the cliffnotes: Hannibal is a demon, and Will is a 12 year old boy. They live in Baltimore.

“Dean,” Sam hisses.

“You thought you could just make Baltimore your own personal picnic basket, huh? Easy pickings with no hunters in town. But let me tell you, buddy—”

_ “Dean.” _

“What?” Dean spits, the Colt still trained on the demon smirking in front of him.

“There’s the kid.”

“What?”

Sam nods toward the boy peering around the edge of the door. He’s trying to be sneaky, but Sam catches a flash off the whites of his eyes before he darts back into hiding.

Sam starts toward the door, intending to draw him out. The poor kid must be fucking terrified. He doesn’t miss the way the demon’s eyes follow him, the subtle tensing of muscles beneath his suit, the way he leans toward Sam, shifting his weight to pounce.

Dean doesn’t miss it either. He keeps the gun trained on the creature’s heart. “Hey, don’t you fucking move.”

“If you hurt the boy, I will rend you limb from limb,” the demon says in its strange accent.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure you care about your midnight snack. Stay still or else I’ll blow your head off.”

“You think your firearm will hurt me?”

Sam can hear the smirk in Dean’s voice, knows it’s there even without looking. “I don’t know. Do you want to find out?”

The demon stares down its nose imperiously, something dangerous glinting in its eyes, but it doesn’t move again.

Dean nods in Sam’s direction, a barely-there gesture that’s nevertheless loud and clear in the unspoken language they both share, one formed through long years of glances and minute shifts of weight.

Sam walks through the door that’s still standing ajar, his own gun at the ready. It’s not common for demons to nest together, but it’s not unheard of either. He sweeps the room, keeping the gun pointed in the same direction as his eyes, just like Dad taught him.

He’s standing in a dining room. It’s dark and gothic, looking like something out of a Mary Shelley novel. The dining table itself is comically long. Paintings clutter the walls, sculptures stud the mantle, but there’s no one here.

No one but the boy he’d glimpsed earlier. 

_ “Christo,” _ Sam murmurs, and nothing happens. The boy’s eyes remain wide and blue, shining with tears as he looks up at Sam from the corner he’s cowering in.

Sam sticks his gun back in his waistband.

The kid is small, can’t be older than twelve, and fine tremors shake his skinny arms. He shrinks back against the wall as Sam approaches.

Sam puts his hands up and slows his roll until he’s barely moving at all. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, alright?”

The kid looks like he doesn’t trust Sam as far as he can throw him, and Sam doesn’t blame him. He can only imagine the kind of hell he’s been through.

“That man, he’s not going to hurt you anymore, okay? You’re safe now. Just, I need you to come with me.” He holds his hand out, and the kid flinches back. Sam shows the kid his hands, fingers spread, no sudden movements. “Okay, no touching, got it. Can you tell me your name?”

The boy swallows.

“Will,” he says.

And it turns out the kid is fucking fast, because before Sam can blink, there’s a steak knife stuck in his arm, and Will is off like a shot, banging through the open door.

He swears and wrenches the knife free by the handle, bleeding all over some rich asshole’s hardwood floor.

There’s a clatter. A grunt and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

“Dean!” Sam calls.

He pulls out his gun and runs into the next room, still bleeding freely.

All hell has broken loose, quite literally. The demon’s ditched its meat suit. It’s now horned and about seven feet tall, and it’s got its hands around Dean’s neck. Sam’s world narrows to those two points of contact, long taloned claws inches away from his brother’s carotid.

“Dean!”

Sam aims, trying to get a clear shot, one that won’t spray his brother’s blood all over the walls. It’s impossible. They’re moving too much. He gives it up, reaching for the flask of holy water in his back pocket instead. He bites the cork off and splashes it over the two struggling figures just as the demon sinks its claws into Dean’s neck. It snarls and rears back, and Sam doesn’t think. He just _ does. _ He charges the thing, putting all his weight behind it and slamming them both to the floor.

The demon is dazed still, seared from the effects of the holy water, and that’s all he needs. He starts reciting an exorcism, the Latin words familiar on his tongue.

“Stop!” cries a child’s voice, high and thin.

Everyone stops. They look.

Will is pointing a gun at him—Dean’s dropped Colt gripped in shaking hands—his finger on the trigger and tears dripping down his face. “Stop it right now. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.”

So that’s how he ends up on the floor of some swanky house in Baltimore, bleeding like a stuck pig while a nervy preteen holds a gun on him in frighteningly unsteady hands.

But before,

* * *

Before, they were just passing through. There had been a kelpie drowning tourists out on the Delmarva Peninsula, and they were in the area. It was quick enough work to deal with it, if a little wet—they were back on the road by noon.

There was never any reason to stop in Baltimore. They were going to drive and keep driving; that was the plan. They’d gotten a lead on a nest of vampires in the Carolinas, and they could make it there by nightfall, easy.

Sam was looking forward to a hot shower, a warm bed, and zonking out in front of some crappy late night tv. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in an honest to God bed. The jobs kept coming, and so did they. It would be good to spend a night in a motel, even if it was just the one.

Maybe there could be more, he thought, watching trees roll by outside the window. It would be nice to take a break, even just for a couple days.

He looks over at Dean singing along to Metallica and tapping his hand in time against the steering wheel. The sun catches on his stubble, turning it golden in the light.

There’s no sense bringing it up now. Another job under their belt, a whole vampire nest cleared out, staked and burned, and then Sam will bring it up. Dean’s more likely to go for it when he’s riding the high of a finished job anyway. The sunlight catches his eyelashes as he belts out the chorus, makes them glow all pale and otherworldly, and it niggles at something at the back of Sam’s mind. It reminds him of something, makes him think of something, but he can’t put his finger on it.

Sam realizes he’s staring about when Dean does.

“What?”

“Huh?” Sam asks, deciding to play dumb.

“Do I have something on my face or something?”

“Yeah, but you can’t get ugly off.”

Dean rolls his eyes without taking them off the road. “Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Dean smirks, and Sam’s mouth cracks into a wide smile of its own accord. He feels it slicking over his face like honey, warming him from the inside out.

* * *

They were supposed to drive straight through Baltimore, but that’s not what happens. What happens is they decide to stop for a bite to eat. They’re still flush with cash from a hustle a few states back, and they haven’t eaten since dawn. They’re downtown when the car starts sputtering, and there’s a vague _ pop _ as they roll to a stop at a traffic light. The car doesn’t start back up again.

“Oh come on, baby, no,” Dean croons to the car, but no dice. She won’t start back up again for love or money, and they’re stalled smack dab in the middle of an intersection.

Cars pile up behind them, honking as the light turns green, and Dean waves them past impatiently. More honking. Eventually he rolls down the window.

“Go around!” he yells, and a gold Corolla guns it past them, rubber screeching against the pavement while the driver yells something that’s lost to the wind.

Sam sighs. As soon as he’s reasonably sure he’s not going to get mowed down by an irritated Baltimore motorist, he gets out to push the Impala. He pushes, Dean steers, and together they get the car sitting along a curb with No Parking signs down the block as far as the eye can see.

Well, shit.

Dean gets out and pops the hood, swearing as a gout of steam hisses free.

“You need a hand?” Sam asks.

Dean swears again. “No.”

He’s about to get back in the car. He’s got a dog-eared book shoved in his pack, a mystery he’d picked up a few hundred miles ago, and this seems like as good a time as any to find out whodunnit. It’s a nice day, at least. Not too hot if he rolls the windows down. A breeze blows down the street and ruffles his hair. The summer hasn’t begun to do its worst yet.

A police cruiser pulls up behind them while he’s got his hand on the door. He puts it in his pocket, casual and easy, turns to face the officer getting out of the car—portly, middle-aged, red mustache and sideburns that aren’t doing him any favors. He’s got those beetle-slick sunglasses on his face and looks like every stereotype from every cop movie on earth. It’s all Sam can do not to roll his eyes.

“You boys need some help?” he asks.

Sam doesn’t miss the way Dean turns his face away, peering into the hood more intently than strictly necessary.

“No, sir,” Sam says, putting on his best boy scout voice, smiling and putting himself between the cop and Dean. “We’re just having a little car trouble. I think it overheated.”

“This is a no parking zone,” the cop points out, nodding at the signs. The deep blue of the sunny sky glints off his mirrored shades, smooth as the water that kelpie drowned his victims in.

_ No shit, _ Sam thinks.

“Ah, yeah,” he says, scratching at his head. “I’m really sorry. This never happens, but I swear we’ll be out of your hair in a couple minutes.”

“You’re sure you don’t need me to call somebody? Tow truck? Something?”

“No, sir.”

“Well alright. I’m patrolling this area, and I should be back around this way in about an hour. I expect you both to be gone by then.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam says. “Thank you.” He smiles, toothy and guileless. 

The cop nods and walks away with a “you take care now” tossed over his shoulder.

Dean snorts into the engine before the cop is even fully out of earshot.

“Yes, sir. No, sir,” he mimics in a high, girlish falsetto.

“Dude. I do not sound like that.” He smacks Dean on the arm. “And anyway, I just saved our asses. A little gratitude would be nice, Mr. Wanted in the State of Maryland.”

“Wouldn’t need gratitude if we’d driven straight through like I wanted.”

Sam crosses his arms. “You’re not blaming this on me. I wanted to get something to eat. _ You _ wanted to stop in that diner in the city.”

“Only because you brought it up.”

“So what’s the verdict?” Sam asks, nodding toward the car.

“Overheated, like you said. Should be good to go by the time Officer Friendly gets back, but I want to pressure test it before we do any serious driving.”

Sam’s stomach gurgles, loud and empty, reminding him that he still hasn’t eaten since this morning. He grimaces, determined to ignore it. Another hour won’t kill him. He’s lived through worse. He settles in the car with his book, windows down. He gets three pages in before it happens again.

Dean looks up. “Dude, you going to do something about that?”

Sam shrugs. “Looks like we’re stuck for the time being.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I need a supervisor.”

“The cops might come back.” He doesn’t need to remind Dean what happened last time the Baltimore PD took an interest in them.

Dean waves him off. “You worry too much. It’s fine.”

Sam hesitates, and Dean sighs.

“I’m a big boy, Sammy. Look, I’ll wait in the car, alright?”

And that—it actually is better. “Yeah, alright,” Sam says. “You want anything?”

“Cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke,” Dean says without skipping a beat.

Sam snatches some cash out of their supplies—two twenties, just in case—and folds them into his pocket. He slams the car door behind him and doesn’t bother looking back.

It feels good to stretch his legs, better than he’d have thought if anyone had asked.

He wanders aimlessly down the street, keeping an eye out for a burger joint but mostly just soaking in the sunshine and fresh air. The neatly manicured trees above cast patchy shadows over the sidewalk. They shiver and dance as a breeze rustles the leaves.

He’s not in any particular hurry. They have an hour.

It’s the first time he’s been alone in weeks. Traveling the way they do means living practically on top of one another, and they’re used to it. They have their own particular rhythm, a way of moving around each other in close quarters. They get by. They’re as good at not talking as they are at shooting the shit, but sitting in a room with another person isn’t the same as being alone, no matter how quiet it gets.

It’s different in a quantifiable way, walking around with no one but his own thoughts for company. It would get lonely, given enough time. His time at Stanford taught him that, but even then, loneliness was something to be savored. He’d had little enough of it in his life. He’d pressed himself to the sharp-pricking pain of it, just to feel something new.

And now this. He doesn’t know what _ this _ is. They can’t stay on the road forever, but that’s exactly what Dean seems hellbent on doing. Sam’s one to talk. It’s not like he’s done anything to stop him.

He walks until his internal sense of time starts to nag at him, letting him know he should think about turning back. He still hasn’t seen a single diner—that’s what you get for breaking down in the suburbs. He spots a McDonald’s across the street and jaywalks across four lanes of traffic.

He remembers reading once that the golden arches were supposed to be the same everywhere—a cheap, gimmicky way to make people feel more at home. This one doesn’t have any arches, just the same, squat military-green roof he’s seen the world over. Same thing, really. Landscapes repeat. Visit enough cities, enough small towns, and it all starts to look the same.

He orders two quarter pounder meals and snags a local paper to rifle through while he waits. It takes longer than he expects, so that he ends up jogging back to the car to make it there in time. Dean starts the engine as soon as he comes into view.

“Thought I was gonna die of old age here, Sammy.”

Sam shrugs. “There was a line.”

He passes Dean one of the bags and opens up his own. The savory, greasy scent hits him, making his stomach growl anew, and he shoves a handful of fries in his mouth before even bothering to unwrap his burger.

They eat in silence, firmly planted in their own thoughts until the last fry is gone and a slurping cuts through the quiet.

“That’s our cue to go,” Dean says, glancing in the rearview mirror.

Sam looks behind them as Dean puts the car in gear. It’s Officer Friendly again, parking right behind them, but they pull away from the curb and back into the flow of traffic before he can get out of his cruiser.

There’s a split second where Sam’s afraid he’s going to follow them—he doesn’t know what they’ll do if he does—but the car doesn’t move. Sam watches it get smaller and smaller in the rearview until it disappears completely.

“So, vampires?” Dean says.

“Hang on a sec,” Sam says, flipping through the newspaper with grease-stained fingers. “Look at this.”

“Look at what?” Dean asks, mustard smeared on the corner of his lip from inhaling his burger too fast and careless.

Sam rolls his eyes and tosses a napkin at him, and Dean grumbles but uses it to wipe his mouth all the same.

At the next stoplight, Sam tilts the paper so Dean can see it. “Series of killings in the last few months.”

“So? Let the cops handle it.” His lips pull up in a sneer at the word _ cops. _ Sam doesn’t blame him. Historically, they haven’t had a great time with Baltimore’s finest.

“No, it’s—something about it is _ weird.” _

“Weird how?”

“Dunno, can’t put my finger on it yet. It’s just a feeling.”

Dean snorts. “Yeah, well. How about having those feelings on the road.” He flicks on the radio and drives through the intersection. “You ask me, we can’t get out of this fucking town fast enough.”

“Thought you said you wanted to check the car.”

Dean shrugs it off. “I’ll pull into a gas station.”

Sam grunts, no longer paying attention. He studies the picture on the front page, a grainy crime scene on newsprint, and can’t shake the feeling that they’re missing something somehow.


	2. Chapter 2

The motel they check into gives Sam the same nowhere and everywhere feeling as the McDonald’s. The carpet is a violent green studded with dingy, well-worn roses in pink. It’s sticky under his feet. He can feel it clinging even though his socks, and he resolves to leave them on. There’s a painting of a boat hanging on the wall, a nightstand between two double beds that’s been pockmarked with years of cellphones and bottles and only god knows what else.

He drops his bag on the floor and collapses on the bed, tracing the water stain on the ceiling with his eyes. It’s daytime outside, but hardly any light makes it through the small, shrouded windows. Everything feels ensconced in twilight.

It’s just as well. They were up and moving well before dawn, and he hasn’t slept properly in days.

Dean’s still outside with the car, fiddling with the engine and making sure they’re not going to end up stranded a hundred miles from here, out on the highway with no cell reception and no service station for miles. Sam had talked him into staying the night in the city (c’mon, just one day), and Dean had grumbled and hemmed and hawed, but eventually he’d given in.

Sam knew he would.

He should get up. Convincing Dean to stay the night was easy enough—easy to lean on his love of the Impala—but a second night’s not going to happen. Not unless he has some hard proof that something weird is going on here. He needs to reread that story in the paper, grab the laptop out of the duffel and plug in some of the names and dates. There was that one name that stuck out, clearer than any other and no good reason for it. He should—

He wakes to the sound of a door opening and closing. The room is dim now, bathed in the eerie halftones of twilight, and Sam leans up on an elbow.

“Dean?”

“Yep.”

He sits up all the way, rubbing the sleep from his eye with a knuckle and yawning so wide it cracks his jaw. “Is the car good?”

“Good to go. She needed a new  radiator cap , but the guy behind the front desk told me where to find an auto shop. We can head out first thing in the morning.”

Sam yawns again, standing up and trying to clear the sleep-fog from his brain. “I still want to check out that thing in the paper, that series of killings.”

Dean flops down on the opposite bed, grabbing the remote control and flipping on the tv. It comes to life with a static crackle, the volume turned all the way up like nails on a chalkboard.

Sam’s ears are still sleep-sensitive, and he gives Dean a look. “Dude.”

“What?”

Dean flicks through channels so quick that Sam doesn’t believe for a second he can see a damn thing on any of them.

“It’s just a serial killer,” Dean says, not even bothering to pause his manic channel-surfing. “Not our area. Let someone else handle the human monsters.”

Sam drags the computer over to the small desk by the window and boots it up.

“No,” he says, absently keying in the password. “No, there was something there. Organs were missing from every victim. The coroner said they were taken while those people were still alive.”

“Tough break.”

Sam grimaces and keeps typing. “Seriously?”

Dean tosses the remote down on the bed beside him. It bounces without sound. “What do you want me to say? People die every day. We can’t save ‘em all.”

“Could show a little empathy,” Sam mutters.

The victims’ names turn up nothing at all. They seem  _ random, _ nothing at all connecting them. An insurance adjuster, a musician, a librarian, and a real estate agent. He keeps digging. He’d be surprised if any of them knew each other, or if they even knew anyone in common. They were taken from all over the Baltimore metropolitan area. There’s nothing unusual about them, except the fact that they all lived in the city, and they all died in truly spectacular, brutal fashion.

There’s no sign of demons, no sign of ghosts or creatures. He scrubs at his eyes, loathe to admit that it looks like Dean is right.

He writes down everything he can find anyway—surviving family members, places of work, the home addresses he can dredge up on Pipl—anything that could put them in contact with someone who had known these people in life. He rips the page out of the pad of hotel stationary when he’s finished.

“I want to check on these leads tomorrow.”

“Sam—”

“Look, if there’s nothing there, we’ll leave, alright? You won’t hear another word about it out of me. One day, on our way out of town. That’s all I’m asking. There’s something there, Dean, I can feel it.”

Dean blows out an irritated breath. “Fine,” he says.  _ “One _ day, but only one.”

* * *

They start out with thin, burned coffee coating their tongues. Sam can feel the acid of it souring his stomach, but the caffeine does its work, fizzing in his bloodstream and doing what the few hours of sleep he’d managed to snag couldn’t.

It means he’s alert by the time they load into the car, Dean still grumbling about the fact that Sam won’t let them hit up a diner.

“I have one day,” Sam says in the car, tossing him a Powerbar and tuning out his bitching. “I’m not going to spend it sitting across from you in a sticky booth waiting for you to finish your eggs.”

“As if you’ve ever waited for me to finish eating in your life, slowpoke.”

Sam shrugs. Dean keeps complaining but eats the energy bar all the same, crumpling the wrapper and shoving it into his pocket, chocolate residue and all.

They knock on the front door of the first house on the list, the address where Bert Edwards used to live before he was found propped in the front of his own car, sitting in both the driver and passenger seats, split neatly in half.

A woman answers the door. She’s pretty in an intentional way, perfect hair and makeup, perfectly tailored clothes. She looks like she’s been crying. Sam can see it in the little imperfections lurking around the edges. Her eyes are red-rimmed and glassy, and her painted mouth turns down when she sees the two of them standing there.

“Mrs. Edwards?”

“Can I help you?” she asks, already slanting the door shut defensively.

“We’re with the BPD. We were hoping to ask you some questions about your husband.”

“I already talked to you. I answered all your questions.”

“I know,” Sam says. “We’re sorry to take more of your time, but we just had a few more things to ask in light of new evidence that’s been discovered.”

“New evidence?” Mrs. Edwards asks, her voice grown sharp and keen. “What kind of evidence?”

Dean clears his throat. “We’ve found three more victims.”

“Oh.” Her face shutters again. She looks toward the house, hesitant. “Look, I have to get to work soon. I really don’t have time.”

“Please,” Sam tries. “We won’t take more than a few minutes of your time.”

She studies his face, watery eyes searching for something. She must find what she’s looking for because eventually she sighs and swings the door wide to let them in. “Just make it quick.” She walks into the kitchen without looking back to make sure that they’re following. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Please,” Dean says. He offers a winning smile that nobody sees but Sam.

* * *

In the end, talking to Mrs. Edwards is a bust. She doesn’t know anything. She talks to them for fifteen minutes before shooing them back out the way they came, no answers but full of better coffee, at least.

“Think she’s lying?” Dean asks.

Sam shakes his head. “No. I think she’s sad and angry and misses her husband, but I don’t think she’s hiding anything.”

There’s an  _ I told you so _ lurking at the corners of Dean’s lips, but he doesn’t say it. It’s not like he has to—Sam hears it all the same.

The next few stops on their list are equally unproductive. They visit a share house whose very walls seem to reek of pot, sleepy twenty-somethings emerging ruffled and blinking muzzily into the hall at three in the afternoon. A guitarist in a local band had died, a young girl named Denise Ingals who was by all accounts a nice person with no enemies, if a little flaky.

They’re sitting on a low, lumpy couch that’s plastered over with dark, suspicious stains. It smells like cat piss, and Sam tries not to breathe through his nose. He tunes back into the tail end of the long, rambling story Denise’s roommate has been telling them.

“She was supposed to meet me at Menchie’s, but she never turned up. I waited for an hour before I gave up and came home.”

“And that didn’t seem strange to you? You didn’t wonder if something had happened?”

The girl in front of them shrugs, kohl-rimmed eyes sitting low and heavy from weed or something else. “That was just Denise, you know? Sometimes she just—” another vague gesture “—didn’t show up. She doesn’t mean anything by it, just loses track of the time.”

“You don’t seem particularly broken up about what happened to her,” Dean says.

The girl shrugs again, and Sam can easily see how that could get annoying. He feels his eye twitch.

“We weren’t close,” she says. “I mean I liked her alright, but we weren’t friends. She did her thing, and I did mine. It sucks that she died, but what’re you gonna do?”

What’re you gonna do indeed.

They stay a little while longer, ask a few more questions to the rest of the roommates, but they don’t turn up anything useful.

Sam’s frustrated by the time they get back to the car, and he slams the door with a little too much force behind him. Dean looks at him. He expects Dean to tell him to watch the paint, but he doesn’t. The silence sets him even more on edge, and he blows out a harsh breath.

“Go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?” Dean asks, pulling out into traffic. There  _ is _ traffic now, the first congestion of rush hour. The sun creeps toward the horizon. Time is running out on his allotted day, and Sam is still no closer to uncovering the mystery that he  _ knows _ is her, if he could just crack it. The feeling makes him irritable and mean.

“Say I told you so, that this is stupid. That Denise Ingals never dabbled in black magic, that Bert Edwards was so boring I’d be surprised if a demon so much as sneezed at him, that all of them are so utterly  _ normal _ that yeah, it looks like an ordinary, human serial killer might’ve done them in.”

Dean doesn’t answer, looking at the road. There’s a certain telltale tension in his jaw, a certain tic of muscle. Sam slumps down in his seat, slouching against the window and watching the fire hydrants and trees go by.

Dean nods toward the paper clutched in Sam’s hand. “You’ve still got two more addresses on your list. Don’t go getting all mopey on me now.”

* * *

Sam relents on his moratorium on restaurants when it’s ticking on five o’clock. His own stomach is gnawing at its insides, and Mrs. Edwards’ coffee and the Powerbar he’d eaten that morning are long gone.

“C’mon, I’m  _ dying _ here,” Dean says, rushing him out of the car and yeah, Sam has to agree.

They duck into a sandwich shop across from the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the next stop on Sam’s list. Food improves Dean’s mood the way it always does. It doesn’t do much for Sam but fill his belly.

Dean’s talking about Metallica’s Black album as he chews a turkey sandwich, talking up Kirk Hammett’s guitar riffs. “I mean they’re masterful, man. They don’t make music like that anymore.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, barely listening. His own sandwich is long gone, nothing but a grease-stained paper to bear witness. He stares at the towering structure of the library across the street, the Corinthian columns seeming to waver in the sunlight, all blinding white blotting against his vision.

His eyes unfocus for a second. He sees a flash of something else—black hair, blue eyes, red dripping down all that white marble.

Dean knocks Sam’s shoulder with his own, and the weird vision dissipates like a mirage.

“Sam?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.” He balls up his trash and stands up.

“Hey, where’re you going?”

“I just gotta check something out.”

He’s out the door in another second, the electronic tone of bells announcing his departure. It takes Dean a second to catch up, jogging across the street after him looking harried and put upon.

He’s surprised to find the library still open. It’s even swankier inside, like the lobby of a luxe hotel. High, domed ceilings are lit with dozens of hanging lamps that cast a warm, golden glow across everything.

“Sam, what the hell?” Dean asks when he finally catches up, snatching Sam’s sleeve to keep him from slipping away again.

A librarian sitting at the circulation desk shushes them, and Sam smirks. It’s a childish impulse that’s never quite left, the desire to laugh whenever Dean gets himself in trouble.

“The third victim was a librarian,” he says by way of explanation. It doesn’t explain why he ran out of the sandwich shop, but it doesn’t really need to. Dean takes it in stride.

He bypasses the librarian at the front desk. The man is still glaring at them behind thick-rimmed glasses, and Sam doesn’t think he’ll give them anything. He’ll save that one as a last resort in case nothing else pans out.

He finds another librarian, a young woman with pink hair reshelving books from a small silver cart.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me,” Sam says.

She startles, knocking a few books off her cart. He bends to help her pick them up.

“Sorry,” she says, apologizing in that kneejerk way some people have. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re actually with the BPD.” He winces when he realizes the other half of that  _ we _ has disappeared, probably checking out the magazines they’d passed out front. He barrels on through the rest of his speech, figuring she won’t notice. “One of your coworkers was murdered recently.”

The woman’s face falls. “Yeah. That was…” she shudders. “Terrible stuff, right? Mrs. Aldrich had worked here forever. The place doesn’t feel the same without her. It feels chilly, you know? Empty, like.”

“How long, would you say?”

“Oh, years and years. I honestly couldn’t say for sure. It was before my time.”

“You’re new here?”

“You could say that. I’ve been at this branch for two years, but the time sure flies.”

“Did Mrs. Aldridge have any enemies?”

The woman bites her lip. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. She did her best for the job, and you should’ve heard her talk about her family. She would have done anything for them.”

“But?”

She hesitates for just a second. “But Mrs. Aldrich—she wasn’t well-liked. She was harsh, you see? Tough around the edges. She’d had a hard life, and I think sometimes that came out in front of the kids. A lot of people didn’t like that.”

“Kids?” Sam asks, surprised.

“Mm. Elaine ran story time for the kids. She used to sit in that room there, every Sunday.” She points toward a cheerily furnished space that’s currently cordoned off with a polite sign informing patients that the children’s department is temporarily closed. The librarian wraps her arms around herself. “That’s where it happened. Where they found her. Mister Berman had the place cleaned, and they ripped up the carpet but.” She shudders. “It’s all kind of morbid, isn’t it? Terrible thing.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “It really is.” They’re quiet for a moment before he goes for the longshot. “Was Mrs. Aldridge involved with the occult at all?”

The question startles a sharp, watery laugh out of the young librarian. “Elaine? No, never. She was a Bible-thumping Christian, church every Sunday, always trying to convert the kids. Actually, she’d had a talking-to about that not long before she disappeared. Really upset one of our regulars.”

“Really?” Sam perks up at that.

“Oh, no, not an adult. There’s this boy that comes by every day, sweet kid. Real shy, you know? I think he’s a bit lonely, really likes his horror books. Anyway, Elaine had a habit of hounding him, and one day his dad comes in, real mad.”

“Did he get into an altercation with Mrs. Aldridge?”

She looks almost puzzled. “No, I don’t think he was the type. Real proper, you know? He just asked to speak with her, polite as you please, and took her to the side.”

“And what did he say?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I couldn’t hear any of it. Whatever it was, it must have put the fear of God into her because she went white as a sheet. It worked, though. I never saw her bother Will again.”

“I don’t suppose you caught the name of this man?”

“No, sorry. His son’s name is Will, though. Will Graham.” She touches his arm, and it startles him. It’s the first time she’s touched him the entire time they’ve been talking. “Look, I know you’ve got to do your job, but don’t bother Will. He’s had a rough go of it.”

Sam makes his promises, not meaning any of them.

He wraps up his interview and goes to collect Dean. He finds him flipping through Popular Mechanics, feet propped up on one of the long communal tables, rocking his chair back in a way that sends a jolt of secondhand embarrassment straight through Sam.

He smacks Dean on the back of the head, and his chair lands back on the ground with a loud thunk.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Sam says, sliding into the seat beside him.

“Any luck with the hot librarian?”

“She said our victim pissed off some kid’s dad pretty good. Sounds like the guy threatened her right before she went missing.”

He fills Dean in on the rest of the details—Dean, who’s obviously not listening. Sam talks at the side of his head until he gets irritated. “Can you at least pretend you’re interested in anything I’m saying?”

“Nope.” He flicks his magazine shut and sits up, suddenly alert. “Did you notice that kid reading books about demonology? He’s been at it since we got here.”

Sam frowns and watches as a thin, reedy boy makes his way out of the library, a stack of books clutched in his arms. “No. You think it means something?”

Dean flicks his ear. “No, I think  _ you  _ think it means something, and if you’re going to go on a wild goose chase for leads, you might as well do it right.”


	3. Chapter 3

They follow the boy home. For all his interesting choice of reading material, he’s about as observant as any other kid, which is to say—not very.

Dean expects him to get into a car, expects an appearance of the hothead father he’d been hearing about, but the kid just keeps walking, and so do they. They leave the car where it’s parked, collecting dust and probably parking tickets along the side of the road. He spares a moment of worry for his baby.

He and Sam follow a few blocks away, walking with their hands in their pockets like they’ve got nowhere in particular to be, just two guys out on the town, enjoying the night air.

They tail him for half a mile, and the boy doesn’t look behind him once. He leads them to a neighborhood that looks like something out of The Stepford Wives. The lawns are perfectly manicured, the flower bushes out front unnaturally even. There’s not a stray leaf or piece of trash in sight.

“You getting any kind of evil mojo out here?” Dean asks Sam, leaning in to be heard.

“No, why?”

Dean casts a skeptical eye at the mansions looming around them. “This place gives me the creeps.”

Sam shrugs. “Just because it’s not a fleapit motel, doesn’t mean it’s  _ evil.” _

Dean turns to look at the sound of a door closing. A woman steps out of her house in perfectly coordinated, skin tight athletic wear in shades of violent pink. A little dog trails behind her on a leash, and it’s not that Dean doesn’t appreciate the view, it’s just that it’s  _ weird. _ He raises his hand and smiles, and she looks the other way before quickly crossing the street.

“See? Weird,” he insists, and Sam just rolls his eyes.

Still it doesn’t escape Dean’s notice that she gives the boy they’re tailing the same treatment, and well. That’s just a weird way to treat a kid, especially your neighbor. He can see why she’d be nervous around them—they’re big dudes, scruffy with road grit still clinging to them, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about him. The kid’s dressed just like the rest of them, clean clothes that look new off the rack—no hand-me-downs for anyone who lives in this neighborhood. Yet she gives him a wide berth, stopping just short of actually crossing the street, and that’s only because she doesn’t want to walk any closer to Sam and Dean than she has to, probably.

From the way the boy acts, it’s nothing new. He doesn’t seem outraged or upset. He barely seems to notice. He keeps his eyes down, clutches his books tighter to his chest, and keeps on walking. It’s a wonder he doesn’t trip over his own feet, walking like that. Dad would’ve hated it.

Dean thinks about Dad, and a sudden pang grips him, clenching tight in the vicinity of his chest.

He shakes his head and shakes it off.

They stop abruptly, Dean lost in his thoughts so that Sam has to yank him back with a hand on his arm. He puts a finger to his lips, and Dean takes the hint, loitering against the side of a building and watching. The kid disappears into a house, one just as big and obnoxious as the rest.

After a couple minutes, it’s clear he’s not coming back out.

“So what’s the plan, Sammy?”

“We go ask a few questions.”

Dean shrugs. “Works for me.” He thinks this is all a waste of time, but the clock’s running down, and he’s happy to follow Sam’s lead if it gets them out of this town faster.

They wait a length of time that doesn’t scream ‘we followed your son home’ before knocking on the door.

A middle aged man answers. He’s dressed in a three-piece suit (seriously, who wears a three-piece suit in their  _ house?) _ and a faint, puzzled frown. “Can I help you?” He’s got an accent Dean can’t place, something European and soft around the edges.

He’s nothing but perfectly polite, and Dean immediately doesn’t like him. The same as this neighborhood, something about the perfect, meticulous craftsmanship of the facade sets off every alarm bell Dean’s got, and yeah, he’s got to admit that maybe Sam’s onto something.

Sam either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He puts on his concerned citizen face and says, “We’re with the Baltimore PD. We were just in the area asking some questions about a few recent disappearances.”

“You’re conducting interviews rather late, aren’t you? I’m afraid my son and I were just about to sit down to dinner.”

“Won’t take more than a few minutes of your time,” Dean says, smiling brightly.

The man hesitates, indecision flickering over his face for a fraction of a second before he swings the door open. “Of course. Please, come in.”

“Thank you,” Sam says behind him.

Dean is already inside, looking at everything.

The inside of the house matches the outside, everything screaming of an obnoxious level of wealth. More than that, there are creepy touches that make Dean even more sure this is their guy—paintings of rape and murder that look tasteful and bland from a distance, unless you actually step closer and think about what you’re seeing; sculptures on the mantle bearing runes that Dean recognizes, and none of them nice. There are horns mounted on the wall that definitely didn’t come from cattle.

Dean narrows his eyes. Everything inside seems designed to taunt.  _ You see me, but you don’t  _ see.

“Sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

“I didn’t, but I hope you’ll forgive my lapse in manners. I’m Doctor Hannibal Lecter. I’m afraid I’m also quite distracted at the moment. Speaking of which—” he glances at his wristwatch. “It’s just about time for the roast to come out of the oven. Will you stay for dinner? I believe I have enough for everyone.”

“Uh, no. No thank you.”

Sam kicks him where Hannibal can’t see.

“Sure, that would be great,” Sam says.

Dean glares at him.

If Hannibal thinks anything of their exchange, he doesn’t show it. He smiles, close-mouthed and chilly. “Excellent. Please make yourselves at home. I have to go attend to the food.”

Dean smiles and holds it on his face, uncomfortable and false until Hannibal turns back into the kitchen with a last puzzled look at the two of them.

“Dude,” Sam hisses as soon as he’s gone. “What’s your deal?

“Take a look around, Sammy. He’s clearly mixed up in some bad shit.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Of course I noticed.”

“And you really want to stick around for dinner with Hannibal the Bad Witch?”

“You don’t know he’s a witch,” Sam says automatically. “Lots of people use runes.  _ We _ use runes. And if he’s involved with the disappearances, dinner will give us a chance to find out more.”

Dean shakes his head. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

Sam narrows his eyes. “Since when does Mr. Shoot-first-and-ask-questions later care about research?”

“Since I have a bad feeling about this, okay? That good enough for you?”

“No, not after I just spent the morning hauling ass around the city trying to prove to  _ you—” _

Their conversation is cut short as Hannibal appears in the doorway, minus the suit jacket and wiping his hands on an apron. “I don’t suppose you have any dietary restrictions? You’re not vegetarians, I hope.”

Dean laughs. “Definitely not vegetarians.”

Hannibal smiles. “Good. Dinner will be ready momentarily.”

He disappears again.

“There’s a kid here,” Sam says, leaning close in order to be heard. “We can’t just leave.”

“Damn it, Sam.”

But they don’t leave.

* * *

Dinner might be the most awkward thing that Sam has ever endured. For one thing, the boy they’d followed home from the library is conspicuously missing.

“Where’s your son?” Dean asks.

“He wasn’t feeling well, so it’s just the three of us, I’m afraid. I find I’m glad for the company, as unexpected as it is.”

“The food is delicious,” Sam says.

It is, even if it seems like enough to feed an entire army. A large roast sits in the center of the table surrounded by root vegetables cut into perfect wedges. Sprigs of rosemary stick out at artful angles, and the salad on their plates is intricately—if neurotically—constructed. He can’t imagine all this food was ever meant for just two people.

Hannibal smiles at the head of the table. “Thank you. Cooking has become a bit of a hobby of mine. There’s something elemental in the act of feeding others, turning fire and salt to your purposes.”

Dean gives him a look over the table, and Sam ignores him. “Have you lived in the area long?”

“We moved recently.” He says it as though the question is final, which makes Sam want to pry at it, sure there’s something around the edges.

“Where did you live before?”

“Here and there. The list of places I’ve lived is long and unfortunately not particularly interesting. I’m much more interested in what brings you to my door.”

“Christo,” Dean says. He says it like a sneeze, covered up in the palm of his hand, and the demon’s eyes flash black across the table.

“Ah. I was wondering when it’d come to this. I was hoping we’d at least make it through dinner.”

A great many things happen at once, then. Hannibal rises from his seat, chair legs scraping along the floor, and Dean reaches for his gun. A small, black-haired boy with cornflower blue eyes peeks around the doorway, drawn by the commotion.

_ “Dean.” _

“What?” Dean spits, the Colt still trained on the demon smirking in front of him.

“There’s the kid.”

Sam goes after him and gets himself stabbed. He returns to pandemonium, to a huge, black monster with its claws wrapped around Dean’s neck. He body slams it and ends up on the floor, staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Don’t move.”

Dean coughs. Sam’s only got half his eye on the kid pointing a  _ gun _ at him because he’s busy looking at Dean’s throat. Dean’s blood seeping around the edges of his fingers as he bleeds out onto the floorboards, and Sam’s trying to figure out how much blood he’s losing, how much is too much. His face is pale, and Sam’s hands twitch with the urge to reach out to him.

“Alright,” Sam says. He holds out his hands, shows that they’re empty. “Alright, no one’s going to hurt anyone, just, put the gun down.”

“No. I’m not  _ stupid,” _ Will hisses. “If I put the gun down, you’ll kill Hannibal. Back away from him. Both of you.”

Sam hesitates.

“Now!”

He moves, taking a few steps back to appease Will. His eyes track back to Dean, who hasn’t moved.

Will points the gun at Dean. “You too.”

Sam takes a half step forward and is rewarded by a gun in his face again.

“Stay back.”

He does. He shows Will his hands. “He’s lost a lot of blood, and I’m afraid he’ll bleed out if he doesn’t keep pressure on that wound.”

The kid looks to the demon, who nods. He gets up—the holy water didn’t keep him down for long—and stalks over to the boy on tall legs, every limb preternaturally long. He puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and some of the tension visibly drains out of Will. Sam can practically see Will leaning into the touch. He lowers the gun to the floor as his eyes flutter shut for a moment.

Will looks up at the demon who nods and  _ smiles _ slightly, a mouth full of too many jagged teeth. “Whatever you like,  _ mylimasis.” _

Will looks at Sam and raises the gun. “That’s not my problem,” he says.

He curls his finger around the trigger, and Sam has a moment of disbelief. All the things they’ve survived, all the things they’ve killed, and he’s going to die here at the hands of a  _ child. _

He looks at Dean, and there’s no thought behind it. No plan, no art. Just the simple knowledge, as true as his heartbeat in his chest, that if he’s going to go out, he’s going to do it looking at his brother.

_ “Wait.” _ Dean’s voice is a ragged mess. He coughs, and it sounds painful. A fresh gout of terror seizes Sam as he watches Dean spit up blood, bright and vivid. He talks like every word is torture. “Don’t. Please, kid. Don’t do this. Whatever trouble you’re in, we can help. This isn’t the answer.”

And Will  _ laughs. _ He honest to god laughs, and the sound sends a chill down Sam’s spine.

“You don’t know,” he says. “You don’t know anything about me, not the first thing.”

“So help us,” Sam says. “Tell us, and we’ll figure it out, but first you have to let me get my brother to a hospital. Please.”

Dean growls. He staggers to his feet—a last ditch burst of heroism, who fucking knows—and Sam darts forward to catch him before he hits the floor, the gun be damned. He puts pressure on Dean’s neck, reinforcing Dean’s grip. Everything is so slippery. Dean’s fingers are cold.

Sam waits for a shot that never comes. He looks up.

“You love him,” Will says. He says it wondering, with a weird edge in his voice.

“Of course I do,” Sam hisses. “He’s my brother.”

“No.” Will’s face does something complicated. He shakes his head. “You  _ love _ him.” He looks at Hannibal, suddenly seeming as young as he really is. He bites his lip. “Can you fix him?”

Hannibal tilts his head. “I could. Is there a reason that I should?”

“Because I want it.”

Hannibal smiles, a mouth full of too many teeth. He rubs the back of the boy’s head fondly. “That’s a good reason indeed.”

The demon advances on them, folding himself beside Sam and Dean on the floor.

“Stay away from him,” Sam says, jerking Dean toward his chest reflexively. Dean moans in pain, a faint, weak sound that wounds Sam clean through.

Hannibal glances at Sam only briefly, a flicker of annoyance on his face. When he speaks, it’s low and methodical, the voice of someone without a care in the world. “I’m going to heal your brother because Will asked it of me. Left to my own devices, I would snap your neck and feast on your bones as soon as look at you, so do not tempt me.” He gestures to Dean. “May I?”

It’s disorienting, this mix of prim civility and savagery. It knocks Sam off balance, pushes him closer to the edge of hysteria he’s already riding with Dean going limp in his arms and the scent of his brother’s blood thick around them.

He nods.

Hannibal reaches for Dean, and Sam holds on until the last second. He looks the demon straight in the eye. “If you hurt him. If you do  _ anything _ to him other than fix him, I will send you straight to hell, even if it kills me. Do you understand me?”

Hannibal inclines his head, and Sam lets go.

Hannibal pulls Dean into his lap as if he weighs nothing. Dean himself is doing his best impression of a ragdoll, limp and clammy in his arms, and all Sam can do is watch helplessly.

Hannibal leans over Dean’s form and pries his hands away from his neck. It’s easier than it should be. Dean puts up no resistance at all. Blood burbles up from the wound like a wellspring, and Sam swallows, brows knitted together as he watches. Dean’s skin has gone waxy and white. The demon bends his head to Dean’s neck and starts to lave the torn skin with his tongue.

“What’s he doing?” Sam asks. His fists clench at the sight of the thing’s mouth on his brother.

“Healing him,” Will says. His eyes have grown soft, and his voice takes on a reverent hue. He cranes his head to watch, and Sam has to look away.

This isn’t in any of the demon lore. It’s something else entirely. It goes on for what seems an interminably long time. Hannibal drinks blood that Dean doesn’t have to spare, and Sam worries that they’ve met some new kind of vampire instead—that he’s stupidly let him  _ feed _ on Dean—when Hannibal raises his head. Blood is smeared around his mouth, red on deepest black, and Sam’s heart is in his throat.

It isn’t until Dean starts to breathe again, rattling and hoarse but very much alive, that Sam lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He breathes, and his lungs feel too tight, as if he’s the one who was maimed. He winces when he looks down at Dean.

His throat is still torn, muscle peeking red through tattered skin. He can see the pale white of Dean’s trachea, the cartilage showing through.

Sam swallows. “He doesn’t look any better.”

“He needs to rest.” Hannibal glances at Will. “You’re welcome to stay the night here if you promise not to harm myself or my charge.”

“I— What?” Sam’s mind feels slow, struggling to keep up with the mental whiplash of the last several minutes.

Hannibal smiles. “It’s been a strange night for us all, I suspect. Stay. I insist.”

There are about a dozen reasons that’s a bad idea, but he looks at Dean, and he doesn’t see any other option.

“Fine.”

* * *

Hannibal disappears, and Sam is left standing in a room with Will and his unconscious brother. He can’t help but notice Will has not put down the gun. (Smart kid.)

Awkward would be an understatement.

“You know what he is,” Sam says, and it’s not a question. Before, he’d had his doubts. It’s not inconceivable that the kid’s dad could be possessed. Depending on the kind of demon, a family might not realize anything was wrong—not until it was too late. Even if Will did realize that his dad was acting strange, most people were willing to overlook a lot—to explain it away, pretend they hadn’t seen, hadn’t heard—in order to cling onto the life that they knew.

This was… not that.

The creature had hulked out in front of Will, and he hadn’t batted an eye. He’d threatened to  _ kill _ for it.

“Yeah,” Will says, cautious. Wary.

“You know he’s a demon.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So it’s not  _ safe. _ He’ll hurt you, even if he hasn’t already.”

Will laughs. “You don’t get it.”

“You keep saying that, but how can I if you won’t explain?”

“Hannibal was there for me,” he says quietly. He’s still looking at Sam, but he suddenly seems very far away. Sam wonders if he could grab the gun. He looks at Dean on the couch and thinks better of it. “He was there when I needed him, when no one else was. He’s all I have. He’s all I  _ want _ to have.”

“Will,” Sam says, careful to keep his voice gentle. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but demons lie. They aren’t—they’re not like us, okay? They’re not  _ good.” _

“I didn’t say he was good. I said he was there for me. Is there for me. You think I care about good?”

“Maybe you don’t. But Hannibal ripped open my brother. I almost watched him die in front of me, and you stopped it. That doesn’t sound like someone who doesn’t care about good.”

Will sets his jaw. “Your brother tried to kill Hannibal. You both did.”

“And what about all the other people he’s killed, huh? You know so much about him—did you know about that?”

Will is quiet for a while. “Yes.”

Sam doesn’t know what he was expecting. He wasn’t expecting that.

Hannibal returns before he can say anything, human and dressed in a fresh suit. He looks no worse for the wear, as though they hadn’t just fought in the dining room. As though he hadn’t just had his mouth on his brother’s neck.

Hannibal clucks, looking at Sam’s arm. “I’ll show you to your room then have a look at that. It looks deep.”

Sam looks down. In the heat of the moment, adrenaline had swept aside the pain in his arm. It returns with a vengeance as soon as he remembers, and he almost resents Hannibal for pointing it out. It hurts like a bitch. He shrugs anyway.

“I’m fine.”

“I insist,” Hannibal says for the second time that day, and Sam is tired. He’s tired of dealing with demons and strange, sad-eyed children. He feels poisoned by his own terror, the after-effects of his fear for Dean’s life clinging to him like a hangover.

“Fine.”

Dean is dead to the world, sleeping fitfully on the couch, and Sam twitches when Hannibal gets within arm’s reach of him. The demon pauses, cocking his head and looking at Sam.

“What?” Sam asks.

“I’d offer to carry him, given the state of your arm, but something tells me you wouldn’t allow it. I’m afraid the guest bedroom is upstairs.”

Sam grunts. The thing is, Hannibal isn’t wrong. Sam doesn’t intend to let him anywhere near Dean, if he can help it.

He stands beside his brother, looking down at his pale face. There’s a streak of blood cutting across Dean’s cheek, and Sam has the sudden urge to lick his thumb and wipe it away, but Hannibal and Will both wait, watching with eerie silence, and this isn’t  _ for _ them.

He gets down on his knees and gets his arms under Dean, gritting his teeth against the way Dean’s jeans dig into the cut on his arm.

“Lead the way,” he says, and Hannibal does.

Will follows behind them, silent as a ghost, and every hair on the back of Sam’s neck stands on end. There’s nothing to be done, so he focuses on carrying Dean without dropping him, focuses on the pain in his arm, and somehow they make it up the stairs.

The guest room is as gothic as the rest of the house, dark and dour despite the street lamps outside. Heavy curtains shutter the windows, but for all that, it’s clean. There’s no film of dust, no background of mildew like the one that lingers in so many of the motels they find themselves in. He deposits Dean on the bed with a grunt, laying him down as gently as he’s able.

He grabs his arm, putting pressure on it in the hopes of staunching the pain still radiating from it.

“There’s a bathroom down the hall with towels and toothpaste and stuff,” Will says. He quirks his lips up. “Hannibal’s still not great at figuring out what humans need, so I thought I’d tell you.” He lingers in the doorway. Sam thinks he’ll say something else, but he doesn’t, and the silence stretches awkward between them.

“Come,” Hannibal says, laying a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Let’s leave our guests alone.”

Will nods and lets himself be led from the room.

“You’ll let me look at that arm later?” Hannibal asks Sam.

Sam nods. He intends to do no such thing, but it seems to satisfy Hannibal. He shuts the door behind him, and Sam and Dean are left alone in an unfamiliar space.

“You’re fucking heavy, you know.” Sam tells Dean’s insensate form when they’re alone. “Maybe you ought to lay off the cheeseburgers.”

Dean mutters in his sleep, turning his face into the pillow, and Sam sighs.

They’ll have to get the car. It’ll probably be fine overnight, but they’ll need to move it in the morning. It’s psychological, he knows, but he feels itchy with it so far out of reach. Trapped. The car’s got all their stuff—research, supplies, Dad’s journal. He feels naked without it.

He looks at Dean, breathing easier, the edges of his wounds already starting to knit together, angry and pink but whole, unblemished skin for all of that. He touches the edge of a gash, and Dean flinches in his sleep. Sam gives into the urge to wipe some of the blood off Dean’s face and then leaves him alone. At least one of them can sleep.

He peels off his shirt and spares a glance for his own wound. He flexes his hand. It’s leaking blood, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to kill him. Everything still works the way it should. He looks to the door, the flimsy pop lock that probably wouldn’t keep anything in this house out—not even the kid.

He’s not going to get any sleep, but he can watch the door as well lying down as standing up, so he gets in bed beside Dean. There’s only one bed, but it’s big enough for two, enough that they’re not cramped together and his legs don’t even hang off the edge.

He thinks of Will saying  _ you love him. _

Dean is asleep—unconscious, possibly cursed to stay that way until his body manages to knit itself back together—and Sam has a hard time feeling anything but grateful for that.

He pushes himself closer to Dean, close enough to curl around him, burying his nose in Dean’s close-cropped hair. He puts his hand over Dean’s heart to feel the life in it, the steady thump of pumping blood. He lets the guilt wash over him, familiar as the old friends that other people surely have—wanting what he shouldn’t want.

He lets it carry him like a tide, and it lulls him to sleep.

* * *

Elsewhere, demons walk.

Or demons sit up in bed, trying their level best to comfort the incandescent ball of human rage that clings to them, hungry for comfort.

“They tried to kill you,” Will mutters darkly.

Hannibal cards a hand through his hair. “So they did. Demon hunters. I’ve seen their kind before, off and on through the millennia. I’ve killed them.”

“Will you kill them?”

Hannibal smiles and brushes lips against Will’s forehead. “If I have to. If they hurt you.”

He can feel Will’s anger simmering below the surface of his small, breakable body. He can feel it in the way Will tremors, a fine vibration that travels through his skin as he spreads his hand across Will’s bare back, all the places his fragile bones reach toward the surface.

He loves this creature beyond all reason.

“You could have killed them,” Hannibal reminds him, because it must be said that this was Will’s choice as much as his own. “You held the power of life and death in your hands, and you chose to spare them.”

“They’re sad. And lonely.” He looks up at Hannibal, blue eyes beseeching, and Hannibal wonders if Will knows the power he has. That he’ll one day have. His beauty is devastating. He’ll be the ruin of many, if Hannibal has any say in it. “They’re in love. I can feel it.”

“And you want to watch them suffer?”

Will shakes his head. He bites the edge of a thumbnail until Hannibal reaches up and plucks the hand out of his mouth, pins it gently to the bed.

“Not suffer.” He’s lost in thought for a moment. “Why did you let them stay?”

“You find them interesting.”

“So do you.”

Hannibal inclines his head. “So I do.”

“What will you say to them tomorrow?”

“Me?”

“Of course. They’re your project.”

Will shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Hannibal slides his hands down to frame Will’s hips. He digs his fingers in and presses, grinding Will into his lap. Will squirms and sighs. Hannibal does it again, and Will moans softly.

He leans forward to claim a kiss, and Hannibal allows it, sucking softly on his bottom lip before pulling back. Will makes a small sound of protest, chasing his mouth, and Hannibal holds him fast, just out of reach.

Will likes that—he usually does, although it’s equally pleasant when he doesn’t. There’s a certain joy to be found in both, different yet equally enthralling—Will pliant and sighing in his arms and Will hissing and fighting, mad as a hellcat. Tonight he enjoys it, and Hannibal takes pleasure in his delight.

He holds Will back, a hand knotted in the back of his hair tightened to the point of pain. Hannibal’s eyes trace the bloom of a scarlet flush down Will’s neck, across his chest where small, pink nipples are just beginning to peak in the cool air.

“You can’t just leave your guests waiting, can you? That would be very rude.” He trails his free hand down Will’s chest, down to cup the bulge of Will’s erection. Will moans, loud and wanton, and Hannibal squeezes. “What will you say,  _ mylimasis?” _

Will shudders, struggling to find his voice as Hannibal strokes him. He finds a rhythm that makes Will’s mouth fall open, one that makes his voice stutter out in small squeaks.

“Answer.”

“I don’t know. Oh god, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ll—” he gulps, lungs straining, taking down air as though there weren’t enough in the room. “I’ll show them.”

“Show them what?”

Will shakes his head, sharp, harsh movements. “That it isn’t  _ wrong. _ That there’s beauty in it—that it’s good.” He says the last with such heartbreaking conviction that even Hannibal is moved.

Hannibal doesn’t believe in goodness, of course. He’s been here since the beginning. He’s existed since the dawn of time itself. He knows too much to believe in childish things, whatever the creator might like his pets to believe about the nature of creation. And yet there’s something compelling in Will’s belief, that he can hold such things to be true despite all that’s happened to him—despite everything they are.

Will’s voice breaks as his orgasm crashes over him. He goes stiff in Hannibal’s arms, grinding down against him a final time. His mouth falls open in silent praise, and Hannibal loves him, loves him.

Will smiles at him, flushed and happy, and Hannibal is helpless to do anything but smile back. Will reaches out to touch his face. His hand rasps over the stubble on Hannibal’s cheek, the dull, oddly pointed peaks of his human teeth.

“Will you help me?” Will asks. There’s that sweet vulnerability, that blatant trust, and Hannibal loves to see it as much as it terrifies a deep part of him—one that rarely gets to see the sun.

“Always,” Hannibal promises. He growls and flips them over.

Will hits the mattress, breathless. Hannibal reaches down between them with his hand still coated in Will’s spend. He reaches back, down beneath Will’s penis dangling soft and quiescent, still sticky with the evidence of his pleasure. He rubs firmly against the pucker of Will’s hole, letting the meager amount of semen on his fingers ease the way.

Will whimpers and tries to close his legs. “Sensitive.”

“I know, darling.” Hannibal presses a chaste kiss to the inside of Will’s knee before prying his legs apart. “Relax or it will hurt.”

Will gives him a look. “You like it when it hurts.”

Hannibal smiles.

Will hasn’t even finished speaking when Hannibal forces his way in, two fingers pushing past the resistance of the body beneath him. Will arches off the bed, fingers fisting in the sheets as Hannibal works him open hard and fast.

He pants and sweats and shakes, and Hannibal drinks it all in, every twitch and moan, every flicker of distress across Will’s features. He luxuriates in the blood-red heat of Will inside, gripping and slick, tight around his fingers. He bends his head to taste the place where they’re joined.

Will moans, and this is what Hannibal loves best, this place where pleasure and pain meet, blurring until he’s quite certain Will couldn’t tell him where one begins and the other ends.

Hannibal licks Will until his prick is straining again, until his voice is hoarse from yelling, then he pulls his fingers out and buries himself to the hilt in one swift motion. 

Will’s body seems to have decided on pleasure for the night. He spreads his legs wider to let Hannibal in. He says his name, wraps arms and legs tight around him and holds on while Hannibal sets a slow place, rocking them both to slow, lazy orgasms that turn everything within him soft and crumbling until he wonders if he might not have caught a glimpse of goodness after all.

He pulls out to a wince. To Will’s face, sleepy and sated. He’s already snoring before Hannibal turns out the light.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean wakes up sticky and covered in blood.

He wakes slowly, clawing his way to the surface. He’s always been a light sleeper. It’s been trained into him from the time he was young, his dad rousing him at all hours of the night. It was important, Dad said, because one day it wouldn’t be him—it would be something worse, and being quick on your feet was the difference between being alive and being lunch meat.

He’s woken with a weapon in his hand—a gun, a knife, his own bared fists—as far back as he can remember. That he doesn’t now is how he knows he’s been drugged, the way sleep feels sticky and suffocating, clinging to him like black tar that refuses to let go. He panics and fights against it, struggling toward wakefulness. There’s something heavy on him, and it makes a deep grunt as he elbows it where it’s soft. He twists, fighting the thing that’s got him pinned down.

“Dean. Dean, it’s me. Whoa, hold on, you’re alright.”

Sam.

Sam’s voice, Sam’s hands holding him tight, pinning his arms but only until he goes slack and stops fighting.

Dean opens his eyes.

As soon as Sam’s sure he’s not going to get another elbow in the ribs, he lets Dean go.

It was definitely the ribs. He can tell by the way Sam’s rubbing at them, smoothing a hand absently over the notches visible through his thin t-shirt.

“You good, man?” Sam asks cautiously.

Dean swallows, and his throat clicks. It’s horribly dry. His voice comes out as little more than a croaking rasp when he tries to speak.

Sam’s eyes widen fractionally, and Dean doesn’t miss that; how can he? He narrows his eyes and tries to rifle through memories that are slow to come.

“Hang on, I’ll get you some water.”

Sam gets up from the bed clad in only a white t-shirt and boxers. He tugs his pants back on and goes, shutting the door quietly behind him. Dean sits up and takes stock of his surroundings. There are white sheets that feel soft and slippery against his skin, a thick, grey bedspread that’s been half-kicked to the floor. Art lines the walls, sepia-toned drawings of nude figures in various states of repose.

Dean’s neck crackles when he moves. There’s a crust of something coating it, and he raises his fingers to his skin. Brown-red flecks come off in his hands, flakes of dried blood, and he remembers. Oh, he remembers.

He remembers searing pain, the feeling of long, black claws as sharp as razors sliding into his throat. He remembers the crunch of his own trachea, the red drip of arterial spray and the sound of his own flesh wetly ripping.

He knows exactly where they are, knows it’s not just any hotel. This bedroom fits right in with the rest of Hannibal Lecter’s house, the same mocking pretension dripping from every wall and painting and piece of furniture. Dean would hate him even if he wasn’t a demon. What he doesn’t know is  _ why _ they’re here.

The thing is, he doesn’t much care.

He starts off the bed, ready to stalk off down the hallway and stick a knife into the thing’s heart—if it’s got a meatsuit, he can hurt it, nevermind what it  _ is.  _ He’s hellbent on reducing it to sulfurous ash, so he’s surprised when his legs crumple under him, surprised when he lands in a heap on the ground.

Of course Sam comes back just in time to see him like that, the glass of water in his hand immediately forgotten. He sets it on the nearest flat surface and rushes to Dean.

“Whoa, take it easy. You should stay in bed.”

“Stop mothering me,” Dean snaps. It doesn’t do much good. He’s not very convincing when he’s colt-weak on his feet. Gallingly, he  _ does _ need Sam to help him back into bed, which Sam does, half-carrying him. Dean can feel his cheeks heat. “What, are you going to tuck me in, too?” he gripes to cover his embarrassment, and Sam smacks the back of his head.

“Ass.”

“Bitch.”

There, this at least feels normal.

Sam hands him the water, and he drinks it, draining it in a few short gulps. He feels like he could drink twenty more, but he doesn’t want to ask for it. He feels strangely resistant to the idea of Sam doing him any favors.

“So what’s the plan here, Sam?”

Sam runs a hand through his hair. “The plan is you stay in bed until you can get farther than two steps without collapsing.” Dean opens his mouth to protest, and Sam cuts him off. “The plan is that I’m going to stay here and make sure nothing happens to you until then.”

The grim threat in Sam’s voice pulls Dean up short.

“And we’re just going to—what? Take advantage of this thing’s hospitality until then? Be its houseguests?”

“You got any better ideas?”

“Yeah, you go down the hallway and exorcise the fucker.”

“It’s strong. Stronger than any of the demons we’ve seen.” There’s something else on Sam’s face, something he’s not telling Dean.

“And?”

Sam bites his lip. “And we have no weapons.”

Dean swears. “What?”

“It was a condition of our staying here, and I wasn’t exactly in a position to refuse.”

Dean notices the thick, white bandage wrapped around Sam’s arm for the first time. He nods at it. “What happened to your arm?”

Sam grimaces. “Kid stabbed me.”

Dean frowns. “It’s weird, right? The daddy-dearest devotion thing?”

“Fucking weird.”

There’s a knock on the door then, and they both freeze, exchanging a glance. Dean feels naked without a pistol or even a knife. He feels literally naked but leaves the blankets where they are. Not like he’d get far anyway, as weak as he is, but the last thing he needs is a tripping hazard wrapped around his legs if he has to try to fight.

Sam swings the door open.

Dean doesn’t know what he was expecting. Mr. Nightmare, maybe, but it’s just the kid—Will. Small and scrawny with dark rings beneath his eyes.

“I brought you breakfast,” he says. Sure enough there’s a tray on the floor. Will bends down to pick it up. “I figured you wouldn’t be feeling up to going downstairs.” He smiles like he’s laughing at some kind of private joke, and Dean doesn’t like it.

“I feel fine,” Dean says.

Will gives him a skeptical look. “Sure.”

Dean looks over at the food, interested despite himself. It smells incredible, and his stomach gurgles loudly at the smell. “It’s not poisoned or anything, is it?”

Will looks almost offended. “Hannibal wouldn’t do that to the food. It’s just bacon and eggs.”

He leaves the tray on the nightstand, and something catches Dean’s eye, a flash of color blooming a mottled blue. He grabs for the kid’s wrist and pushes the sleeve of his shirt up. Will’s wrist is purple and blue, stained with bruises in the shape of a fist.

“Did he do this to you?”

“It’s fine.” Will snatches his arm back and rolls down his sleeve.

Dean doesn’t have to see the other one. He’d bet dollars to donuts that it’s a matching set. He feels sick wondering what other bruises the kid’s clothes are hiding. “Hell no, it’s not fine. Our job is to protect people, right? People like you from things like him.”

Will shakes his head.

Sam puts a hand on Will’s shoulder, and Dean doesn’t miss the way he flinches. “We  _ can _ protect you, if you decide that’s something you want.”

“I liked it, okay? Is that what you want to hear?” Will spits the words at them. “I like when he touches me. I like when he hurts me.” His mouth twists in a sneer. “You think you’re the only one he’s cut open?”

Will is talking to Dean, but Dean is watching Sam. He sees the indecision flicker over Sam’s face, the way his fists clench. He knows Sam too well not to know the way his brain works, that he’s thinking of kidnapping Will, taking him far away from here and dropping him off somewhere he could get a new start, a real chance at life. He knows Sam too well to think he’s not planning on being a hero.

He knows because he wants it too.

But there’s something about the kid, something whip-smart and perceptive because his eyes cut over to Sam, sliding over him like water over glass, imperious and dismissive. And maybe he sees too much, more than he should, because he says, “You’ll try to kill him again. You’ll try to take me with you, as soon as he’s well enough to fight. I wish you could see.”

“See what?”

“That you don’t have to fight.”

Will leaves them alone, and Dean looks at the plate of food still gently steaming on the table. He’s suddenly not hungry.

* * *

Sam gets Dean to eat eventually.

It’s not like Dean to pass up a meal, so it’s not hard to convince him, especially once Sam points out that he’ll be back on his feet sooner if he actually eats. He cleans his plate and stays awake long enough for Sam to help him to the bathroom. He bitches and moans and gripes the entire way, and Sam rolls his eyes and lets him.

He can barely stand, so a shower’s out of the question, and Sam doesn’t want to leave him alone in a bath for the length of time it would take for him to wash himself. Dean refuses to let Sam stay and supervise, so Sam wets a washcloth in the sink, wrings it out, and tosses it at him. It lands wetly against the side of his head, and Dean makes a face at him from his perch on the closed toilet.

“Oh, real nice.”

“What happened to ‘don’t mother me?’”

“Sorry, does that translate to ‘please throw things at me’ where you’re from?”

“I could’ve made it cold. Would’ve served you right.”

Dean huffs and cleans himself off. When the washcloth is rusty red and saturated with grime, Sam takes it back and rinses it again. He passes it back and waits, staring up at the ceiling while Dean finishes giving himself a perfunctory trucker’s bath.

“These clothes reek,” Dean says.

Sam’s nose agrees. The front of Dean’s shirt is matted with more gore than Sam really wants to think about—evidence that his brother should be dead right now—and he shrugs. “It’s not that bad.”

“You should go back to the car and get our stuff.”

Sam eyes him. This isn’t about a shirt. Not really. It’s about the weapons they don’t have, the lore they can’t research, the protection they’re leaving on the table. Sam would breathe easier with a gun tucked in his waistband, but it’s out of the question.

“Nuh-uh, no way.”

“Sammy, c’mon.”

“I’ll see what I can do about clothes, but I’m not leaving you here. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Sam—”

_ “No,” _ Sam says with a finality that finally gets Dean to shut up.

He helps Dean back to their room and despite Dean’s protests, he falls back asleep not long after.

His own stomach grumbles, and he realizes he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. He has no idea what time it is. There’s no clock in their room, and his phone is dead, but the light through the window is bright and glaring. Sam would be surprised if it was earlier than noon.

He takes a last look at Dean. Safe for the time being and unlikely to try taking on a demon any time soon. He looks at the remnants of Dean’s meal, nothing more than crumbs and a few eggy smears across plates that he’d have to call  _ fine china. _ There’s a little orange juice left in a glass, nothing more than dregs and bubbles. He brings it to his nose and sniffs, sticks his tongue out to taste.

It seems fine. Like the orange juice is just—orange juice.

He sighs and puts it back on the tray, and with another last look at Dean, he heads downstairs.

* * *

Upstairs is deserted, and so is the kitchen. He finds a banana on the counter that seems safe enough and eats it in a few neat bites beside the trash can. He finds Will in the living room sitting beside a window.

“I didn’t know if I’d see you again today,” he says.

“Where’s Hannibal?”

“At work.” He answers without looking up from the notebook in his lap.

Sam wanders over to get a better look. He’d expected demonic sigils or Latin or something, but it’s…  _ math. _

“Are you doing  _ homework?” _

“Kind of. I don’t go to school. I get bored during the day, so I teach myself. For a while I just did a lot of reading, but this seemed worth knowing.”

Knowing he likes to read and study shouldn’t matter, but it does. It contextualizes the boy sitting in front of him, paints him as something other than the innocent under a demon’s thrall, the one who’d nearly killed his brother. Sam isn’t sure he likes it.

He leans in and peers over Will’s shoulder anyway, pointing at one equation. “You got this one wrong.”

Will squints at it. He chews the corner of his lip, biting off a flake of dead skin before erasing the numbers and writing the correct answer.

“Good job.” Sam smiles at him.

Will looks up with a small smile but doesn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“So Hannibal… works?”

“Yeah, he wants to learn more about people so we can blend in better. So we can settle down instead of moving.”

That was… weird. He’d never heard of a demon trying to put down roots.

“You can go get your stuff,” Will offers. “He won’t be back until later, and I’m not going to hurt your brother.”

Sam  _ shouldn’t. _ There are a million reasons he shouldn’t, but there’s something about Will he trusts. He thinks of Dean sleeping in blood-soaked clothes, thinks of the fit he’ll pitch if the Impala gets impounded, thinks of the crossbows and holy water and rosary beads in the trunk, and nods.

* * *

He gets back with plenty of time to spare. Will’s given up on math homework in favor of reading a book that seems way too old for him, and Hannibal still isn’t home.

The first thing Sam does is make a beeline for the guest bedroom where they’ve taken up residence, as much to deposit their bags as to reassure himself that Dean’s fine, that he’s still breathing. The light sound of snoring reassures him, but he steps closer anyway, just to be sure. He worries about how much Dean’s sleeping, but he supposes there are worse things in the world.

He’s checking their weapons, laying them out on the room’s sole oaken desk when he hears the distant sound of the front door opening and closing.

He creeps back downstairs, but not before tucking a flask of holy water and a rosary into his back pocket. He finds Hannibal in the kitchen, having already shed his outer layers. He greets Sam in nothing but a pressed shirt and slacks.

“I hope you’re hungry,” he says by way of greeting. “I so rarely get to cook for guests. I picked up an excellent cut of loin from the market just for the occasion. I was thinking a blackberry sage reduction would be divine.”

“We’re not going to play dinner party with you just because we can’t leave. You still cut my brother open, asshole.”

Hannibal’s lips curve in a moue of displeasure. “And yet it’s so much more pleasant when everyone behaves civilly.”

He sets down the cut of meat, still wrapped in butcher paper, puts down his briefcase, and walks into the living room. Sam follows, unwilling to let the demon out of his sight. Hannibal takes a seat in one of the stiff-backed armchairs and beckons to Sam, motioning to the other seat.

“Come here. I want to show you something.”

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

Hannibal shrugs, an elegant dip of his shoulder. “Suit yourself.”

He unbuttons one of his shirt cuffs and rolls up the sleeve until his arm is exposed to the elbow.

Sam watches warily as the fingers of his other hand lengthen into long, glittering talons. He takes one and runs it down the center of his forearm. He seems to barely press at all, but the flesh parts like so much meat. Blood drips black and sizzling from the wound.

“What the—” Sam starts, but he’s cut off by a soft cry from across the room.

Will’s dropped the book he was reading in favor of clasping his own arm. Blood runs down it, between his fingers clamped around the same spot where Hannibal had cut himself. He pulls his hand away, and Sam hisses in sympathy. There’s an identical gash on Will’s arm, red to Hannibal’s black, deep enough that Sam can see the tendons showing through.

He staggers over to them, face gone white with terror.

“What did you do?” Sam asks, starting from his seat. “Keep pressure on that,” he tells Will, folding Will’s hand back over his arm and reinforcing it with his own. He squeezes tight, though it’s got to hurt like hell.

“Hannibal,” Will whimpers, looking at the demon. Looking for all the world like any other hurt kid wanting comfort.

Hannibal provides it, dragging a fond hand through Will’s hair. “Just a moment, darling.”

Will sniffles and nods. He leans against Hannibal and waits, dripping blood as Hannibal turns his attention back to Sam.

“An interesting side effect of a binding spell gone wrong,” Hannibal says. “Will didn’t succeed in tying his soul to me, but he did manage this.” His lips lift in the ghost of a smile. “Clever boy.”

“Is that a threat?” Sam asks.

Hannibal considers this. “A demonstration.”

Will’s arm is growing slippery and hard to hold. What they’re doing isn’t doing much. He’s still losing too much blood. He’s going to, unless someone gets him some actual medical attention. He’s making sounds that are distracting, pitiful and pained.

_ See? _ he wants to say. He wants to shake the kid, though it’s hardly the time.  _ This is what he  _ is. _ This is what they do. _

“Aren’t you going to do something about this?” Sam snaps.

“In due time. Although,” he tilts his head. “Maybe I’ll make him stand there until he can’t any longer.”

Will already doesn’t look good. His face is edging toward grey. His skin’s gone pale and clammy. Perspiration lines his forehead, and his jaw is clenched tight.

“That’s cruel,” Sam says.

“Were you raised so differently? I looked into you today, Sam Winchester. Your family has made quite a stir in certain circles, your father with his child soldiers.”

“It’s not the same. If we were hurt, it was an accident. An occupational hazard of an important job, saving lives.”

“Good little soldier,” Hannibal murmurs. “You don’t really believe that or you wouldn’t have run away.”

“Does it matter?” Sam asks. He nods at Will. “This is just cruelty for cruelty’s sake.”

“Is it not purer to love a person’s suffering for its own sake? To find it beautiful and worthy as an end unto itself, rather than accept it as a matter of course? Wouldn’t you rather your pain was revered instead of pushed to the side, crowded until it suffocates in the worst-lit halls of your mind? It would make you something other than a pack mule, to be loved like that.”

Sam grits his teeth, grinding them together in a way that’s sure to give him a headache. “I’m not listening to this.” He holds out his other hand to Will. “Come with me. I’ll patch that up.”

For a second, he actually thinks Will might agree, but he shuts his eyes and shakes his head. He’s leaning more heavily into Hannibal now; Sam can see it.

“What would you do for him?” Hannibal asks, and he sounds plainly curious. “Sew him up with your second-rate field medicine? Leave him with vivid scars and pain for weeks, if he heals at all, if he doesn’t succumb to an infection first? Your bodies are so fragile, your medicine so weak.”

“And what would you do for him?”

“What I’ve always done,” Hannibal says, drawing Will into his lap. “I’ll help.”

Will goes gratefully, boneless and pliant. He turns into Hannibal’s chest as soon as he can, hiding a face that’s streaked with tears and sweat. Sam is afraid to let go of Will’s arm for fear of what might happen, and his choice puts him closer than he’d like to the whole tableau.

He only lets go when Hannibal takes Will’s arm from him, grabbing it with authority, bending it just so despite Will’s hiss of pain. He lowers his head and dips his tongue into the gaping red slit, parting the flesh in a way that makes Will thrash and struggle. Hannibal holds him fast, one hand clamped around his arm and the other around his waist.

Sam steps back, horrified but helpless to stop watching. It’s violent, a wash of blood and pain. It’s tender in a way that’s hard to look at.

He looks away eventually. When pained moans and lurid slurps turn into something else entirely. When Will tilts his head up for a kiss and pulls away with a blood-streaked mouth, and Hannibal rubs at the seam of his pants.

There’s nothing he can do to stop it, and bearing witness feels too much like complicity.

Hannibal catches his eye as he’s leaving, and Sam feels buried alive with guilt.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this fic was going to be longer, but the longer it stretches on, the more improbable I find it that all these people continue to breathe. The premise "nobody dies" is hard to support. In that spirit, have these last two chapters, posted at the same time. Thank you so much for coming along on this experimental ride with me. 🖤

He ends up back in their room and wishes it didn’t feel so much like retreat. He feels shell-shocked, out of step with his surroundings, so he’s not particularly careful with them. The door bangs shut behind him, and Dean startles upward from his nap.

It doesn’t occur to Sam to apologize. Too many years, too many close quarters. They would’ve driven each other nuts ages ago if they apologized for every bump and misstep and annoyance.

“It’s worse than we thought.”

“What is?”

Dean’s eyes are still unfocused, hazy with the recent thrall of sleep. A thin sheen of sweat clings to him despite the air conditioning that permeates the entire house. The whole room smells of him. It’s a familiar smell, one as deeply entrenched in Sam’s psyche as his own name. He’d know it anywhere, and even now it calms him on a prerational level.

“He’s— they’re—” If he’s quiet he can hear them, the vague thump and rattle of furniture downstairs. He thinks he can hear strangled moans. He talks so he doesn’t have to. “I think they’re fucking. Will and Hannibal.”

Dean’s eyes widen. “Well that’s sick.”

It’s not like either of them would put it past a demon—that goes unsaid. They’re  _ demons, _ after all, but it’s still somehow shocking.

“It gets worse,” Sam says, mouth grim. He explains what he’d seen, the way their bodies seem to be intertwined. 

Dean listens, his face growing more grim the more Sam speaks. “So you hurt one, you hurt the other.”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, fuck.” It hangs in the air between them. “We have to do something.”

“Obviously.”

Sam pulls the flask of holy water and rosary beads out of his pocket and tosses them carelessly over the nightstand. He gets into bed beside Dean and sprawls out over the mattress.

“What’re you doing?” Dean asks. Sam can feel Dean looking down at him. He’s sitting, so he has the higher ground. Sam’s brain can never give it a rest.

“Lying down, what’s it look like?”

“We need to do something.”

“If you have any ideas, I’m all ears. Until then, I’m tired, and I’m going to take a nap.” 

He is tired. He’d barely slept the night before, but he knows he’s not going to get any sleep now. The knowledge doesn’t stop him from stubbornly closing his eyes. He can rest, at least.

He can feel Dean silently fuming beside him and resolutely refuses to open his eyes to acknowledge it. Sam’s being childish, maybe. He feels entitled to it. When the room goes silent, he imagines he can hear noises floating up from downstairs, so he says, “Talk to me so I don’t have to hear it.”

He doesn’t have to say what  _ it _ is.

“You’re a brat who’s taking up too much of the bed.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”

A few more seconds pass before Dean lies down again. Sam moves over to give him space. He really can’t stand the silence.

“Do you regret coming here?” Sam asks. “Are you sorry we stayed?”

Dean shrugs, as much as he can while flat on his back staring up at the ceiling. “This is our kind of problem.”

He says it as if it’s enough of an answer. Maybe it is, for Dean. Sam’s not sure it’s enough for him.

“What he said earlier—the kid, Will,” Dean clarifies. It’s a mercy that he doesn’t turn his head to look at Sam. “What did he mean?”

Sam studies the ceiling like it’s the most interesting thing in his life. “He said a lot of things.”

Deflecting, and they both know it.

“Sammy?”

And it’s the tone of voice that does it, the tone of voice that does him in. It’s the way the air in the room is cloying, somehow too hot and close. It’s the fever-itch under his skin that there is so much  _ wrong _ here, and he doesn’t know how to begin to fix it. It’s Dean’s voice sounding hopeful and fragile and impossibly, inexplicably  _ young. _ Open. Vulnerable.

He doesn’t want to look. He doesn’t look, because if he looks, he’s pretty sure he knows what he’ll see, and he can’t handle that. He’ll see love. He’ll see what he’s always known is there; he’s not  _ stupid, _ he knows it’s not just him, but he  _ can’t. _ They can’t, and if he looks, he’ll drown—

“Open your eyes, Sammy. Look at me.”

Sam shakes his head, feeling all of about twelve again himself. Twelve and hopelessly in love with his older brother, full of hero-worship and devotion. His brother, hopelessly golden, perfect, up high where Sam longed to be, if only to be there with him. Back when things were crystalline-perfect, cast in amber. Sticky summer afternoons spent in the car while golden light poured in through the windows and heated the leather seats. His thighs stuck to them everywhere his shorts didn’t cover, looking at Dean through slanted lashes pretending to be asleep while their father’s music droned on in the background.

“Sammy.”

He opens his eyes, he does.

Dean is so close, looking at him sleep-rumpled and soft around the edges. Concerned. Angry. Hopeful.

Sam makes a wounded noise, and before he can slam his eyes shut again, before he can pull away (maybe he’ll pick a fight after all. Maybe it doesn’t  _ matter _ that the kid would feel every blow, and if that isn’t a dark thought), Dean is right there in his space. There’s a firm, callused hand cupping his jaw. He can feel the rough edge of Dean’s thumb scraping against his chin, and Dean is  _ looking _ at him, looking like he can see right through him.

He doesn’t ask again. Doesn’t say Sam’s name in that tone of voice, and Sam is  _ glad _ because he doesn’t think he could bear it. Dean brings their lips together, so close they’re almost touching. He can feel Dean’s breath on his lips, stale and a little bit sour.

He stops right there. He holds Sam in place and leaves himself within reach, but he doesn’t move, as though this last infinitesimal divide is the one he’s not willing to breach.

“Dean?” Asking. Uncertain.

He smiles. It’s not the cocky smile reserved for waitresses and barflies. It’s the one Sam remembers, one cracked right out of the pages of the family albums they never had.

It’s the closest thing to an invitation he’s going to get, and even if it wasn’t, Sam’s not dumb enough to think it would’ve changed anything. He surges forward and presses their lips together. He pushes his whole body into Dean’s like he can’t get close enough. They’ve touched a thousand times, in a hundred different ways, but never like this, and the shock of it blazes through him like licking a battery, like touching a live wire.

He kisses his brother like he can’t get enough (and he  _ can’t, _ that’s the thing), and Dean lets him. It’s the strangest fucking thing that’s happened to him in his whole life, and that’s saying something. Dean hangs onto the sleeves of Sam’s shirt and kisses him slow and languid, refusing to be hurried along by Sam’s frantic pace.

And it burns, the thought that Dean might just be  _ letting _ him, might be indulging him. That he might not want this with the same twisted, burning, all-consuming inferno that’s eating Sam alive. It makes Sam feel sick, but that doesn’t mean he can stop. He reaches for Dean blindly, grabbing anything he can get his hands on. He ends up with a hand shoved up under Dean’s shirt, fingers splayed over the lean muscle of his back, another one cupped over his hip.

Sam pulls him in close so he can feel it, how Dean wants this.

Dean kisses him once, twice more, pulling back with a final sweet suck to his lower lip that has heat pooling in Sam’s belly. Then he grins, and that  _ is _ the barfly smile, and rolls them over so he’s on top. He disentangles himself and wraps both his hands around Sam’s, forcing his wrists up beside his head and pinning them there.

Sam can’t help groaning and arching into it. He pulls against Dean’s grip, thrilled to find he can’t break it.

And oh, Dean can tell. He squeezes a little harder, tightening his grip so his fingers dig into Sam’s pulse, and it drags another rough groan out of him.

“Fuck.”

Dean is grinning down at him, grinning and panting a little, hard in his boxers when Sam manages to drag his eyes away from Dean’s face, his reddened lips still slick and gleaming. The sight of his brother’s erection straining against cheap, thin fabric does something to him, punches him in the gut with a fresh jolt of lust, and oh fuck, he’s a goner.

“Hang on a sec,” Dean says, holding him back, holding them both back, and it takes a second for the words to compute, for Sam to be able to make heads or tails from them. “Is this—I’m not gonna make you give me a full rundown of the inner workings of Sam Winchester, but is this because of what happened downstairs?”

“Does it matter?” Sam twists his hips, trying to gain control and break free, but Dean just clamps his thighs tighter. He’s certainly feeling better.

“Yeah, actually. It does.”

He doesn’t want to answer that. He shouldn’t  _ need _ to answer that, so he looks away.

He looks away and stares at the wall and waits for Dean to give up. It takes until he starts to feel Dean’s grip slacken that he realizes he really doesn’t want that, so he licks his lips and waits for the words to come.

“It’s not the only reason.”

He looks at Dean and wills him to understand.

“Okay,” Dean says. He blows out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

Maybe it is. But by then the moment is lost, and neither of them know how to get it back. Dean goes to splash water on his face in the bathroom, and Sam stares up at the ceiling. Sleep has never felt farther away.


	6. Chapter 6

“This is unwise, Hannibal. Even for you.” Chiyoh drums her fingers against an obsidian chest of drawers, nails clicking against the smooth, fine finish. The sight of it sparks a remembrance in Hannibal, a certain dim fondness. She’s in her quarters in hell. He knows that chest of drawers well, as he knows every inch of the space she calls her own.

They talk through a mirror now, for Chiyoh refuses to set foot inside his home while the hunters are here. He privately thinks that she would decline to call on him regardless, after the stunt she pulled with Will. She likely fears his retaliation, and she’s right to. His patience and affection for her are considerable, but they are not limitless. Malice is in her nature. He has appreciated its presence in her, but it does not endear Chiyoh to him where Will is concerned.

“I will decide the limits of acceptable risk for myself, thank you.” He watches her over the rim of his wine glass, swirls it to release its tart, fragrant bouquet, infinitesimal bits of sediment twirling in the depths.

“Will you? Or will you continue to let events spool out as they will, though they light a pyre around you in the process? This is not calculation of risk, Hannibal. It’s indulgent fascination.”

“Have a little faith, Chiyoh. Or are you volunteering to show up at my doorstep and take matters into your own hands yet again?”

She smirks, derisive. She shakes her head after a time.

“It’s going to get you killed, you know. This love you harbor.”

Hannibal bows his head, eyes glittering. “Then I will welcome the attempt.”

Chiyoh huffs impatiently. She’s angry with him. Frustrated. But her eyes are fond when she severs the connection.

* * *

“They’re distressed, you know.”

“I know.”

He and Hannibal are both in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up to their elbows. Will doesn’t usually like longsleeved shirts—not in summer, anyway. He’s had to wear them, rain or shine, for too many years to appreciate the feel of fabric constricting his arms, rubbing against his skin. It was the only way to ward off concerned teachers, neighbors who might stick their nose where it didn’t belong and get him beaten worse for it.

It’s freeing to wear what he wants. He weathers their house’s air conditioned chill with pigheaded determination, but he finds himself self-conscious these days. It’s not the scars themselves. He’s fine with them most of the time, wears them proudly as evidence of who he’s been—the things he’s survived or more recently, the choices he’s made.

But he and Hannibal aren’t the only ones here anymore.  _ They _ are, and he doesn’t want their pity or their lack of understanding. So he wears cozy plaid flannel with the sleeves pushed down, except for now.

Now he lets himself be drawn into the stillness and peace that descends upon the kitchen whenever Hannibal is there. This afternoon, they’re making pasta. Two identical piles of flour slump over the table, one before each of them. Hannibal shows Will how to make a well in the flour with his hands, how to crack an egg into the center and whisk it lightly with a fork, drawing flour from the sides little by little.

“How long will it take?” Will asks, moving his fork in short, crisp motions, careful not to puncture the flour dam and let the egg go running out.

“It takes as long as it takes.” Hannibal whisks his own dough together, keeping an eye on Will’s progress, ready to shore up a failing wall with a hand if necessary.

In the end, it isn’t. Will is careful and methodical. He’s good with his hands—his dad always said it was true, and it’s one of those things he’s never doubted.

Hannibal finishes before Will does, but he doesn’t interfere. He doesn’t take over, doesn’t ‘ _ let me’ _ or elbow his way in, and Will appreciates it. He appreciates all the ways Hannibal is so unlike his father—gentle where his dad was rough, well-mannered and  _ quiet. _

Hannibal never yells. Will has, almost,  _ almost _ stopped waiting for it. He’s almost stopped tensing every time he spills a glass of water, every time he drops a plate by accident. Hannibal doesn’t care about those things. He’s dangerous, Will knows, but he’s a civilized, polished kind of danger, sharp like the edge of a knife. The way he is is beautiful, all of it polished to a high shine.

Now Hannibal flattens his dough into a disk and lets it rest beneath a dampened kitchen towel, waiting patiently for Will to complete his portion. A rolling pin rests on the counter, waiting at the ready, already coated with flour. It’s a French one without handles, constructed all from one piece of wood. Will had never seen one before Hannibal brought it home a few months ago.

“What do you intend to do about it?” Hannibal asks, already rolling out the dough. He rolls and folds, then rolls again, forming a perfect rectangle that flattens out little by little.

Will doesn’t have to ask what he’s talking about. Their talks get this way, spiraling and circling back in on themselves, calling to mind things said long before. They never lose the thread of it, not with each other.

“I can’t make them feel better,” Will says, flouring his own portion of dough before reaching for the pin. “They’re going to be upset no matter what I do. It’s not like I don’t understand why.”

“But?”

Will smiles a little, the edges of it quickly crimping as he pushes down on the soft dough. “But it’s not like fear or anger has ever stopped anyone from getting what they want. There’s room beside it. I’ll just—” he frowns. Shrugs. “Make more room.”

It takes him some time to whittle his dough down to a flat rectangle. It’s not quite as even as Hannibal’s. It’s lumpy around the edges in a way that bothers him. He goes to fix it with one last pass, but Hannibal stops him with a hand over his knuckles.

“That’s fine, I think. The dough is starting to get sticky from handling—a combination of developing gluten and body heat. It’ll serve just fine as-is.”

“Okay,” Will says, stepping down off the stool and back from the counter.

A single smudge of flour streaks across Hannibal’s cheekbone, and Will stares at it for a moment. He reaches up and wipes it away with a thumb. Hannibal bends toward him ever so slightly and allows it.

* * *

_ Making more room _ turns out to be one of those things that’s more easily said than done.

“You haven’t left yet,” Will says the next time he sees Sam in the kitchen. It’s been three days.

“We appreciate you letting us stay.”

Will tilts his head. It’s a lie. “You don’t have to do that with me, you know. I don’t care if you’re polite. You’d have left if you could have. Your brother was hurt.”

Sam nods.

“But he’s better now.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re trying to think of a way to kill Hannibal without hurting me.”

Sam sighs. “I know it’s complicated between you two, but you have to understand what he is. What we do. This is our job.”

Will likes talking to Sam. He’s easier to talk to than the other one, whether that’s because of familiarity or disposition is something he can’t quite put his finger on. It makes it more satisfying to shock him. He’s not unaware of the effect he has on people, the way they flinch when he says things you aren’t supposed to say.

“It’d be easier to kill me, you know. Kill Hannibal, kill me. People would be safer.”

Sam tenses. There’s a certain rigidity in the line of his shoulders, the sloping curve of his back. Horror, but not denial. Will can tell the difference.

“You like the idea.” He sounds it out while talking aloud. “You know you shouldn’t, but you do. You know there isn’t another way.”

“We’ll find another way,” Sam says softly. And it isn’t true, but he believes it.

“Have you fucked him?”

Sam stiffens further, if that’s possible. Will wonders that he doesn’t snap, walking around with all that tension coiled inside him. He wonders what it would take to make it happen, wind him up and watch him go.

“That’s none of your business.”

“You should, you know. He would let you.”

“That’s not—”

“Not what?”

“Not how it works. We’re brothers.” Sam drags a hand over his face. “Jesus. What am I even doing? I’m not having this conversation with you.”

Will looks out the lone window in the kitchen, the one that’s barely a window at all, all cloudy and frosted over.

“I think you should leave,” he says finally. “Hannibal thinks it’s funny to watch you struggle, but that won’t last forever. He’ll kill you eventually, or I will.”

“You’re making it harder to justify not killing you both.”

“I know. So will you leave?”

“We’d come back, you know. We can’t just leave a demon running free in Maryland. We can’t just let him kill people.”

Will shrugs. “I’d be older then. I’ll be able to fight you.” He can see it in his mind’s eye, clear as a bell. He wonders if it’s a premonition or merely something imagined, whether it even matters if you can’t tell the difference. “You’ll be older too. You should be careful about the fights you pick now. You won’t be young forever.”

Sam is taken aback. He chuckles in that nervous way that people have. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a really creepy kid?”

Will laughs a little. “You’re not the first.”

Sam tilts his head. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It’s a sudden change in tack, one that gives Will a dose of conversational whiplash. It takes him a second to catch up.

“Alive,” he says when he finally grows up.

“No, really. You must have wanted to be something, right? Before this. Every kid wants to be something.”

“Not me.”

“I know you have an imagination in there somewhere. I wanted to be a magician,” Sam volunteers.

Will’s mouth twitches. “You mean like a witch?”

He shakes his head, smiling in hues of self-deprecation. “Nah, not like a witch. I wanted to be a performer. I actually got pretty good at sleight of hand.”

“But you didn’t become a magician. You hunt demons with your brother.”

“Life turned out… more complicated than I thought it would be back then.”

Will huffs a laugh and not a nice one. He sweeps his arm in a wide arc of gesture, indicating himself, indicating the mansion. “Same.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Sam says. He’s so shockingly earnest.

“What do you think my life was like, before this?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says.

“Take a guess.”

Sam blows out a breath of air and tries to picture it. It wasn’t nice—it wouldn’t be that. No one from a nice home, with a nice family and a nice life ends up here. Will is like them—different in all the wrong ways.

“Your family is dead.”

Will nods, motions for him to keep going.

“They weren’t good to you before.” He thinks of the way Will flinches every time anyone who isn’t Hannibal lays a hand on him. “They hurt you?”

Will smiles, a painful, crooked grin that shouldn’t look at home on his face but still does. “Got it.”

Sam swallows. “You know there are other ways, other people out there. Some of them are good. Some of them could help you.”

“Like you and Dean?”

Sam startles to hear Dean’s name come out of his mouth. He realizes it’s the first time Will’s used it, and Will smirks like he knows it.

“Better than us,” he says.

“I don’t want it. How many times do I have to keep telling you I don’t want it? I’m happy here.”

“He hurts you,” Sam points out.

“Something is always going to hurt me. At least with him, I have some kind of choice. At least now it comes with good things too.”

“Is it really enough?”

“I think so.”

This isn’t something that’s going to be resolved. Not on this night or any other. Frankly, it feels like a miracle that they’re all still breathing, but everyone knows that miracles can’t hold.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” Sam says at last. He turns to go back upstairs. He wants to pack their things. He wants to get away from all of this.

A voice stops him on the stairs.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to be a policeman.”

He looks so shy and young. The skin on Sam’s arm still throbs and stings where Will stabbed him.

Sam nods.

“I could see it,” he says. It’s hard not to feel like they’ve lost terribly, all of them.

He and Dean will leave in the morning. It’s probably the best any of them could’ve hoped for.


	7. Don't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want the real ending, the happy ending, stop.
> 
> If you want the multiverse and a chance to see me get weird, keep going.

There’s another world where they never get that far. A world where Will creeps into the spare bedroom in the middle of the night, that first night where they sleep. His eyes glint like the steel of the blade, and the men sleeping inside are too deep in their dreams, too fast asleep to wake when it’s plunged into their throats. The sheets are all ruined. Someone chokes out a desperate word.

Curtains.

Will licks his lips, panting hard. Something in his gut twists, but not the way it should. He should regret this. Someone, somewhere would have expected him to regret this. His Sunday school teacher, his dad. They’d have been horrified.

He doesn’t regret it the way he should. He just feels strong and vindicated as he throws the knife down on the bed. Two sets of vacant eyes look up at the sky.

They would’ve done it to him and Hannibal. Will just got there first.

* * *

There’s a world where Will comes slinking into their room, but a hunter’s ears are far too keen.

He makes it as far as the bed. Closed eyes aren’t always sleeping, and Dean may have been held under, floating on a tide of cursed dreams, but Sam is wide awake. He feels the bed shift, hears every damp exhalation as Will straddles his chest, leaning over him. A knife still glints.

Sam knocks it aside, hands around this dangerous kid’s throat. There’s a struggle (where is the knife?). He wrestles Will down to the bed, pins flailing legs, and crushes his wrists into the mattress.

He finds the knife too late. It got lost in the shuffle, found buried in Dean’s side. He only realizes it after, once the blood is flowing sticky, soaking into the knee of his jeans.

Accidents can be so deadly.

* * *

There’s a world where that, again, except this time Sam’s got his hand around Will’s neck. The whole room smells like his brother’s blood, and it’s just too easy to squeeze.

  
“Who the fuck are you you?” Sam snarls, hand closed around the hilt of a knife while he crouches in a defensive position. It’s not one Will knows. He tilts his head, flicking on the light to get a better look.

It really is a fucking bloodbath.

[“Him.”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207968/chapters/50488295) Will nods toward the tiny body cooling on the bed. He’s still warm when Will reaches out to smooth a palm over his forehead. It’s really creepy to see his own eyes staring back at him, sightless in perfect miniature, so he sweeps his hand down to close them.

_“What the fuck.”_

Come on, come on. Not again.

Will moves very slowly, palms up. He isn’t very invested in living, but he would appreciate not dying like this. He is trapped in a room with a lot of bodies, and a man who radiates grief like sickness itself. A lover who died, then. Will can’t say he relates to the feeling. Only wishes he could.

He looks around the room—it’s changed. It has some accents his Hannibal’s house never did. It’s all so very eighties, and Will looks over at the body on the bed and considers. Well. That explains a lot, actually.

“Hannibal, you fucking cradle-robber.”

He finds a chair in the corner of the room—not where he expects, but then who the fuck is keeping track—sits in it anyway, slumping heavy, ignoring the very upset man in the corner holding a very sharp knife. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, using a hand to shield his face from the light.

“I feel like you think that was optional. Really, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Will waves him off half-heartedly. “Nothing, don’t worry about it. I’m just dreaming. I’ll be gone in a second.”

“Fuck.”

Will opens his eyes when he hears the clatter of a knife against the ground. “Dropping your weapon in the presence of a serial killer. That’s not very smart, you know.”

The man eyes him, bloodshot eyes red and angry. “You going to kill me?”

“No.”

The man laughs like rusty nails. “That’s a shame.”

“You can survive this, you know. That’s the big secret of the world—you can survive anything.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

“It’s not supposed to. Truth doesn’t have a purpose. It just… is.” Will frowns. “Not very satisfying.”

Will doesn’t think either of them will speak again. He’s surprised when he does. He turns to Sam. “You did the world a favor, you know. He would have grown up to be a terror.”

“How can you know? He was just a kid.”

He can hear it, the edge of guilt. Projection too. Another killer, then. Sometimes it seems like his whole life is full of them. He almost feels bad for the guy.

“So righteous,” Will murmurs. “That won’t serve you well.” He sees the question perched on the tip of Sam’s tongue and cuts him off. “You don’t need to bother asking me how I know that. It never ends well for anyone.” He nods at the kid—at himself. There’s that feeling of vertigo again. “I know Hannibal. And I know myself. Whatever would’ve been spat out from years under his care—the world wouldn’t have wanted to see it. You did them a favor, trust me.”

_“What_ are you?”

“I’m tired,” Will says. “Very, very tired.”

He wonders if he can catch a nap here before he has to return. His own house is so noisy these days. Noisy and full of too many strangers. It’s not good for his head.

There’s a distant thump at the other end of the house. Two heads swivel toward it in unison.

“You should probably leave if continued survival is something that still interests you at all.”

“I can’t,” Sam chokes out, and for the first time Will can hear it, the grief stabbing him, horrible and sharp. The stranger’s eyes gravitate toward the bed, toward the dead man, the one Will doesn’t know but who clearly pains him.

“Okay,” Will says.

“You’re not going to try to convince me?”

“Not looking to make myself a hypocrite.”

Sam shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes with a gore-stained hand. “Meaning what? You wouldn’t be able to leave either?”

“I didn’t leave,” Will corrects him. 

The room is beginning to smell like meat. He thinks maybe he can detect a hint of sulfur beneath the sharp tang of copper.

“Go to sleep,” he says, as kindly as he’s able. “It’ll all be over soon.”

One way or another, it always is. Maybe then he can finally sleep too.


End file.
